Really? The girl said she didn’t agree with same sex marriages broadly on religious grounds. While I don’t agree with her should we really be demonising her because of her beliefs, which although we don’t like them are held by a significant to majority section of the population? Let’s have freedom of speech for all parties and convince her through discussion instead of making her a pariah for others who share the view.

Freedom of speech simply means you’re ALLOWED to say what you want without government sanction; it doesn’t protect you from the consequences of those actions. This is a misunderstanding I often see used, especially by the right. If you advocate bigotry, civil libertarian types aren’t being hypocritical to treat you like a bigot, even if your bigotry is popular, or theologically based. There is no moral obligation to be tolerant of intolerance.

That said, her answer was concise and intelligible. Really, the opposite of Miss Teen SC. And she was stating a personal, social belief. Not advocating legal policy, and I’m sure we’d all be reasonable and torn over this if that we her answer to, say, “Do you think mixed race couples should be allowed to wed?”

When asked about a poll that showed 20 percent of American students couldn’t locate the United States on a map, this is what Miss South Carolina said two years ago in the Miss Teen USA pageant:

“I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, people out there in our nation don’t have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the US should help the US, uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our…”